The classic Red Hot Chili Peppers song that began as a poem
Very few people would choose the word “poetic” to describe the lyrics of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The punk-funk party animals were notorious for being highly sexual and occasionally highly gross with their choice of words. Anthony Kiedis would later transition out of the more lascivious and ridiculous phrases and lines that were a part of the band’s signature sound, but even later-period songs like ‘Hump de Bump’ and ‘She’s Only 18’ proved that the man still had some impure thoughts to get out of his system.
Sure, the man who rapped nonsense syllables on songs like ‘Soul to Squeeze’ and ‘Around the World’ was known for his licentiousness, but Kiedis also had a softer side. During the recording of Blood Sugar Sex Magik, Kiedis had achieved extended sobriety for the first time in his adult life. The struggles to stay on an even keel, especially as the band were experiencing a massive surge in popularity, were weighing heavily on Kiedis’ mind. It was in this state that Kiedis remembered one of his lowest points.
“The loneliness that I was feeling triggered memories of my time with Ione [Skye] and how I’d had this beautiful angel of a girl who was willing to give me all of her love,” Kiedis recalled in his memoir Scar Tissue, “and instead of embracing that, I was downtown with fucking gangsters shooting speedballs under a bridge.”
“I started freestyling some poetry in my car and putting the words to a melody and sang all the way down the freeway,” Kiedis added. “When I got home, I got out my notebook and wrote the whole thing down in a song structure, even though it was meant to be a poem to deal with my own anguish.”
Producer Rick Rubin eventually discovered the poem in Kiedis’ notebook, but the singer didn’t want to develop it into a song, feeling that the other band members wouldn’t respond to it.
“My thinking was that the Chili Peppers were not limited to being a funk band with rapping,” Rubin later explained. “And I remember Anthony was embarrassed to show the song to the other guys in the band. But he sang it to John [Frusciante] and John came up with his part. Then he played it for Flea and Flea came up with his part. And it ended up being a really good song—even though they didn’t realize how good it was until people starting responding to it.”
“It was expressing a really honest, sincere, lonely feeling,” Flea later told The Los Angeles Times. “Anthony really captured a feeling of being a lonely person in Los Angeles, and this is such a big city with so many people, I think a lot of people could relate to it. Especially the time that the riots happened. It was about being in Los Angeles and feeling totally alienated.”
